The MarTech Minute: Merkle’s expansion, Nielsen’s new partner and Uberflip’s SnapApp acquisition

MarTech Minute briefs always appear first in our daily newsletter throughout the week. Click here to subscribe. The following is our compilation of the past week’s briefs from those newsletters.

Chorus.ai launches Cold Call Central. Conversation intelligence platform Chorus.ai launched a new dashboard dubbed Cold Call Central, which uses AI and machine learning to provide insights into cold calls. The dashboard, available in Chorus, displays a customizable view that is designed to help sales users improve prospecting efforts, and identifies top-performing call scripts. “When it comes down to it, we all really want two things — quality meetings booked, and more of them,” said Preston Tiegs, sales enablement at Podium. “But that comes down to hundreds of variables. Leveraging Chorus’s Cold Call Central, we are able to diagnose variables like improving connection rates, building strategy around gatekeepers, how to leave a voicemail, and most of all, identifying winning talk tracks to drive more booked meetings.”

Zilliant announces real-time market pricing. B2B price optimization, management and sales guidance software Zilliant has announced the launch of its real-time market pricing capabilities. The software includes the ability to leverage digital and ecommerce data as an additional input to pricing management calculations to set online-specific pricing. “Market conditions and business dynamics are changing at an incredibly fast pace,” said Zilliant’s senior vice president of products and science Pete Eppele. “Further building on our API capabilities that were introduced in 2015, we’re thrilled to give our customers a reimagined approach to proactive ecommerce pricing that delivers tailored, intelligent, and market-relevant pricing at a moment’s notice.”

Mood Media merges teams under Technomedia brand. Customer Experience company Mood Media has announced plans to expand its Technomedia brand into a new specialty team, bringing three of Mood Media’s teams under one operational umbrella. The new division will provide original, immersive media experiences from design and integration to installation and support. “By combining some of our best resources from across these different divisions, we ensure Mood Media puts its best foot forward from start to finish when selling highly complex and customized solutions to our clients,” said Mood Media’s global SVP of systems, visuals & affiliate sales, Simon Bexon, who is pegged to lead the new Technomedia group.

Independent ad server launches partnership initiative. Independent ad server Flashtalking has launched the Flashtalking Partnership Program. Flashtalking provides advertising integrations with partners including Adobe Advertising Cloud, Media Ocean’s Prima, Nielsen Marketing Cloud and MediaMath. “For independents competing in the shadows of the walled gardens, strategic partnering is critical to success,” said Flashtalking CEO John Nardone. “If you genuinely strive to serve our ecosystem for the long game, as we do, you need a strategy that embraces both friends and competitors in a way that empowers the advertiser at every step of the process. Flashtalking is singularly positioned to deliver because we are 100% media-independent, which allows us to integrate across the ecosystem without conflict. We have launched a well-documented system of public-facing APIs designed to make future integrations fast and easy.”

Uberflip acquires SnapApp. Cloud-based content experience platform Uberflip has acquired personalization tool SnapApp. With the acquisition, Uberflip will bolster its marketing-focused solutions with more insights and increased personalization at scale. “Every go-to-market strategy that a marketer uses, regardless of channel (email, paid advertisements, social, direct mail or other) leads to a destination which is content-based. The opportunity is for marketers to accelerate their buyer’s engagement through their journey by delivering a personalized content experience,” said Yoav Schwartz, CEO and co-founder of Uberflip. “Content makes the biggest impact on a buyer when it’s personal. Bringing SnapApp’s team and capabilities onboard will enable Uberflip to improve lead qualifications for demand marketers by providing additional insights to automate more personalized content experiences.” The acquisition also expands Toronto-based Uberflip’s presence into the U.S. by adding SnapApp’s existing Boston office.

Madison Logic launches new ABM solution. Account-based marketing (ABM) platform Madison Logic has launched its new ML Platform. The solution seeks to help marketers improve upon campaign strategies and accelerate customer journeys. The ML Platform identifies and prioritizes accounts to accelerate them through the sales funnel. “Historically, when B2B marketers attempt to execute an effective ABM strategy, they struggle to piece together traditional demand generation tactics with multiple disparate solutions,” says Tom O’Regan, CEO of Madison Logic. “This causes a gap that often slows down the sales process. Madison Logic’s new ML Platform helps bridge this gap and mobilize marketing and sales teams to operate in sync from start-to-finish to accelerate customer journeys through an increasingly complex funnel.”

Postscript raises $4.5 million in seed funding. Postscript, an SMS marketing platform built specifically for the ecommerce ecosystem, has raised $4.5 million in seed money from various investors, including Y Combinator, Accomplice and Ali Capital. Investment funds also came from a few entrepreneurs in the industry, such as Klaviyo founder Andrew Bialecki and Kayak founder Paul English. “They have outstanding founder/product/market fit, and I believe what they’re building will be an essential part of any ecommerce company’s marketing stack,” said English. Postscript, which currently supports Shopify shops exclusively, offers enriched messaging capabilities via one-click integrations and hyper targeting triggers based on user behavior.  

Bedrock Analytics joins Nielsen Connect Partner Network. Bedrock Analytics, a CPG analytics platform, has joined the Nielsen Connect Partner Network, giving Bedrock Analytics and Nielsen CPG Data customers a new level of analytics across the two platforms. “Bedrock’s cloud-based analytics and insights platform helps to bring Nielsen data to life for our CPG customers, empowering brands to build compelling sales stories for retail buyers,” said Nielsen Connect Partner Network’s Brett Jones. The partnership will expand Bedrock and Nielsen’s joint offerings to include “frictionless” data processing, automated CPG data analysis and CPG data expertise, according to Bedrock’s announcement. 

Merkle beefs up its data science team. After acquiring the data and analytics company Ugam in July, Merkle reports it now has a team of more than 2,500 data scientists who are focused on helping Merkle’s clients identify and measure the value of each customer touchpoint. Along with the new team members, the Ugam acquisition added new capabilities to Merkle’s offerings, including the ability to influence purchases with competitive pricing models and insight into channel partner marketing activity. Merkle Americas President Craig Dempster said the purchase of Ugam has proven to be a “valuable asset” for Merkle by expanding its offerings and enhancing its analytics capabilities. 

Marketers on the Move

The digital experience platform Episerver has named Alex Atzberger as its new CEO. With more than 15 years experience at SAP, most recently as president of SAP Customer Experience, Atzberger was chosen after the company’s board interviewed many highly qualified candidates, according to Episerver’s Executive Chairman Adam Berger who recently served as the company’s interim CEO. “When we dreamed up the perfect candidate it was him. Alex is entirely additive to this all-star Episerver team who welcomes his leadership to hit our customer-centricity strategy out of the park for the betterment of our customers, their respective customers and our partners,” said Berger. Episerver announced last month its acquisition of the content intelligence and analytics platform Idio. 

Terminus, an account-based marketing platform, has appointed Tim Kopp CEO. Kopp has been part of Terminus’ board of directors since 2015, and has held a number of top marketing and tech roles with brands like ExactTarget (before it was acquired by Salesforce) and Coca Cola. “Tim’s leadership experience and deep marketing practitioner background with companies who have pioneered their markets equip him to lead Terminus’ – and the entire market’s – next phase of growth and transformation,” said David Cummings, co-founder of Pardot and Terminus board member. During Kopp’s time with ExactTarget, he is credited with helping scale the company’s revenue from $50 million to $400 million, which ultimately led to its acquisition by Salesforce. 

Engagio, a B2B marketing platform, has hired Megan Heuer as its new VP of marketing. Heuer will lead the company’s marketing team and focus her efforts on showing how customers can utilize Engagio’s solution to drive engagement and measure business impact. “We wanted someone who had a robust understanding of account-based engagement, and also was a leader in marketing, strategy and operations. Megan does far more than simply check all these boxes,” said Engagio CEO Jon Miller, “Her deep knowledge in our space will be a valuable asset to Engagio and, most importantly, to our customers.” Prior to joining Engagio, Heuer served as the VP of research for SiriusDecisions, leading a team of more than 80 analysts and editorial professionals.

Skillsoft has recruited former IBM Watson CMO Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek to lead its global marketing organization. In her new CMO role with Skillsoft, Boockoff-Bajdek will be charged with creating go-to-market initiatives to elevate the brand, driving skills development across Skillsoft’s customer base and serving as the company’s primary brand evangelist. “Michelle’s top mission is to make it even easier for our customers to adopt a culture of learning and skills mastery across their entire operation,” said CEO Ron Hovsepian. Boockoff-Bajdek comes to Skillsoft from IBM Watson where she was responsible for promoting IBM’s AI products and solutions. 

The SMS marketing software platform EZ Texting has named Mark Little chief revenue officer where he will be responsible for driving company growth. “EZ Texting customers, partners and employees will benefit from what Mark brings to our expanding revenue operations team,” said EZ Texting CEO Norman Happ. The company has spent the year building out its executive team, bringing Happ on as CEO in April and Craig Klemp as VP of partnerships in September. Before joining EZ Texting, Little was a principal at the growth consulting firm The Alexander Group. Prior to The Alexander Group, he served as the COO for Humanity.com, CEO for Totaljobs Group and was a managing director for Intuit’s UK division. 

SpotX, the video ad and monetization platform, has hired Allan Welch to oversee the company’s political-focused clients. Reporting to SpotX VP Geoff Halsema, Welch will serve as the director of political and government affairs and will be based in Washington D.C. “As a veteran in the political advertising arena, I’m excited to be joining the SpotX team at such a crucial moment in the industry, as we see an exponential increase in advertising on CTV and OTT,” said Welch. In his new role at SpotX, Welch will be charged with helping clients pivot from traditional TV campaigns to OTT and CTV strategies. Before joining SpotX, Welch held government-focused roles at Yahoo and Mother Jones.